MPs have been given direct access to the site via a content management system, so the blogs aren’t moderated editorially by Echo or Post staff
The Labour Party are organising accreditation so journalists can attend their general election press conferences.
In addition to home address, home telephone number, work or mobile telephone number and e-mail address, which is already stretching it somewhat, they have just ask for:
After lunch: Kate Hoey on Number 87 bus wearing furry coat. Got off at Whitehall. Fur didn't look real.
We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects.
I had a speedy day myself yesterday. It's one which might be worth recording if only to offer a cautionary tale to media studies students or the bright young things on City university's fashionable postgraduate journalism course: our trade is changing fast, the future is uncertain.
the only new detail was the "60-minute train test": no second home allowance for anyone who can get home in an hour.before he arrived at his newsdesk
Both Sky and Radio 4 had rung before midnight. Would I come in next morning to comment?
Some of my colleagues have been in for hours. No late, leisurely starts any more; in the age of the internet newspapers are close to being a 24/7 operation now: think speed, relentless speed.
I normally watch from the press gallery in the Commons, as I have done for years. You can read the collective mood better, as you can't from the TV. But TV is how most people see it, so that's good too. Nowadays, I don't actually watch as much as I did because I have to cover the event on Twitter. Mostly I listen.
If ever there was proof that New Labour's careful courting of Rupert Murdoch would ultimately work against the party's interests, it came on the night of Gordon Brown's conference speech in Brighton when news broke of the Sun's endorsement of the Conservatives.
is precisely this supposed influence that a proportional voting system would smash by handing power to the electorate as a whole, rather than a few Conservative-inclined seats in "Middle England".
A popular newspaper stays popular by listening to its readers and articulating their views with panache.
So what alternatives to its course of action did the Sun have?
First, tell its readers that, contrary to their opinion, it is not time for a change.
Second, tell its readers that the Sun isn't sure that it is time for a change.
Or third, that although it is time for a change, the Sun isn't going to make much of it in order not to be unfair.
When you examine these alternatives, you realise that none of them makes much sense. The Sun had to go with "time for a change" and had to do it in in a brash, bold way. The fact that the timing was "in your face" was really part of the point.
The world of the media is changing as fast as everything else. A politician makes a speech ignored by the conventional media and it gets 1 million hits on utube. The world of Blogs forces a resignation of a chief government adviser before the daily newspapers know what is going on! The new social media is challenging the conventional news elites as never before. Politicians and their established lobbies are running scared. The new social media has blown a hole through the existing elites. What does this mean for the future?
There is a smell of revolution in the air and it gives British journalism its biggest challenge for a very, very long timeadding that
Will a media which has long been a part of the Westminster village be able to act as a moderator of the debate? In the age of the internet it is much better placed to do so than before as most now have areas where readers can join in debates.
The keys to the system are held by journalists. It is only through the collusion of journalists that underhand and anonymous attacks on political colleagues can have any effect.
We may not have known the detail of the nasty smears about senior Conservatives that Mr McBride was dreaming up, but we knew about the smears against his own side. We knew what he was up to, and we knew that he was being paid more than £100,000 a year of public money to do it – and we did nothing to stop it.
I travel a fair bit still and I would reckon we have the most negative, anti-politics media in the world. We also have the most introspective. Even amid the recognition that the current economic crisis is global in cause, scale, and solution, coverage here tends to focus on Britain, and in particular Britain's political leaders.
Imagine how the UK news would have been yesterday if roughly the same number of people who marched against the war in Iraq had marched through the streets of London to protest at GB's handling of the economic situation.
The times may be news-rich, but newspapers are cash-poor, facing their direst financial straits since the Depression. Racing to cut costs as they lose revenue, most have decided that their future lies in local news, not national or international events. That has put a bull’s-eye on expensive Washington bureaus.
From anti-union images that nearly brought the printing presses of London's Evening Standard to a grinding halt, to caricatures of Harold Macmillan as an ageing muscle man and John Major as a feeble hero in underpants, thousands of images that newspaper readers encountered over their breakfast cereals are to be put online.
Created by the country's most acclaimed cartoonists since 1903, some of the illustrations have remained unseen for decades. Now, the largest collection of British social and political cartoons, catalogued by the British Cartoon Archive, will become available on the internet from Wednesday
Because of my overuse of technology, I felt that it became difficult for me to form uninfluenced opinions. Other friends and colleagues have different opinions on the issue, but I feel that technology may serve only to distract from the actual debate.
Not too long ago, millions of Americans would gather around the television to watch a presidential debate, then discuss it at the water cooler the next morning. Now, millions of people all over the world gather in front of their computers to blog, tweet, chat, upload and download information about the debates as they are happening.and adds that
The American people are no longer slaves to traditional media and, through the net, are empowered to speak their mind on any number of topics and share their beliefs with anyone who will listen (or read). The anonymity of the internet means anyone can say anything they want from the comfort of their home — even those things that just a few decades ago would have been called treason or warranted social ostracization.
less than heartening to see Nick Robinson at the BBC ignoring the foundation for an effective Q&A format: if there's one thing guaranteed to produce a wrong answer, it's a wrong question.
His response to the suggestion that Gordon Brown is to abandon his key fiscal rule, extending government borrowing beyond the 40% mark, was to put in the public's mind this quandary Brown, or any other PM, faces: "Do nothing and the government would be faced with a stark choice - tax us more to make up the shortfall or borrow more and break their fiscal rules."adding that he
could almost sense a million angry middle-aged men shouting at the telly, in true pantomime style: "Oh no it bloody isn't!" The third choice, cutting spending, the prudent response to any overspend, national or personal, didn't get a look-in.
the BBC could spin the line that while the choice isn't restricted to two options in a wider reality, in a political reality it is – but that simply doesn't wash. Not only do viewers expect a more detached analysis of facts, not spun facts, from a supposedly independent broadcaster, but those are not even political facts.
